Grace / Faith in Jesus
What It Means to Believe in Jesus
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. You can trust Him to save you.
Faith in Jesus means you believe that He's the Christ, the Son of God, who died for our sins and rose again. You trust Him to save you. The reason you can trust Him is who He is and what He's done.
Faith means trust
"Faith," "trust," and "believe" are basically the same word in the Bible. In the New Testament, the noun translated "faith" and the verb translated "believe" belong to the same Greek word family. They're ways of talking about trust.
My buddy Dwayne was my favorite guy to run behind when we played football in high school. He was a lineman, and I could always count on him to block for me well. I was eager to run behind him. When I did, I was putting my trust in him to make the block.
Now, that's not a perfect analogy, but it's one you can feel all the way down to your shoes. I knew Dwayne, and I was counting on him to look out for me.
Believing in Jesus means I put my trust in Him for my well-being. Because of who He is and what He's done, I count on Him to save me, forgive me, and give me life with God.
That sounds straightforward. But some of us have spent years making it complicated. We know we believe in Jesus. It's what comes after that where we get tangled up. Does that mean I'm saved? Have I believed hard enough? Is there something else I'm supposed to do before God will accept me?
John wrote to believers because he wanted them to know they had eternal life. He took them back to what they'd believed about Jesus.
Believing what God says about Jesus
"Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God." That's how John begins the last chapter of his letter. A little farther down, he says that the one who conquers the world is the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. ()
"Has been born" is something already done, and it stays done. If you believe that Jesus is the Christ right now, that's the evidence you've already been born of God.
Christ means Messiah, the one God promised to send. John is talking about Jesus Himself: the Son the Father sent into the world to save us. Jesus came, lived among us, died for us, and rose from the dead. Our faith is in that person and what He's done.
John describes the testimony God has given about His Son. And he tells us what that testimony means for us: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in His Son. The person who has the Son has life. ()
God has something good to tell you about Jesus, and something good to tell you about what you have in Him. Faith means you believe Him.
You can know what that means for you
I've heard people make this into an exercise where you keep searching your feelings to see whether you really, really believe. Pretty soon you're wondering whether you believe that you believe, and good grief, where does that stop?
John wants us to know something. He writes, "I write these things to you in order that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the Son of God." ()
Those readers already believed in Jesus. John wanted them to understand what that meant for them. They had eternal life. They could know it.
So if you believe that Jesus is the Christ, God's Son, you can say so. And believe what God says follows from that: you have life in His Son.
You may still have questions about the Bible. You may have some things to unlearn about God. There's plenty of room to grow in understanding. You can do that as somebody who belongs to Him.
The good we do follows the gift
Paul says we're saved by grace through faith. Salvation is God's gift. Then he says we're God's craftsmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. God gives us life, and He has good things in mind for us to do with it. ()
We do stuff because of what God's given us. We don't do stuff to get it. There's a whole life of learning, loving, serving, and growing that follows believing in Jesus. God gives us His Spirit, brings us into His family, and teaches us how to live.
Maybe you've believed in Jesus a long time, and you still sit around wondering whether you're also good enough. That's a stupid thing to wonder. You're not. The question is whether Jesus is good enough, and the answer is yes and amen. He's the one you're trusting to save you.
— tobe